On June 20th, 2024, Prof. JIANG Baojun from Washington University in St. Louis, USA, gave a lecture on "Content Exclusivity on Advertising Revenue-Sharing Platforms", which was held in Room 214, Business School Building, moderated by Associate Prof. WU Yifan.

    In recent years, many digital content platforms (e.g., YouTube, TikTok, Twitch, and Instagram) have offered consumers access to content published by third-party content providers. These platforms display advertisements on the content and share advertising revenue with content providers to fuel content contributions. Because digital technology makes it easy for content providers to use multiple platforms, multiple attribution of providers is a major factor in shaping platform competition. In order to maintain a competitive edge, some content platforms have entered into exclusivity contracts with content providers to regulate the providers' multi-platform behavior. To address this phenomenon, Prof. JIANG Baojun developed an analytical model to study the impact of platforms' adoption of exclusivity contracts on market participants.

    Prof. JIANG Baojun pointed out that in the case of uniform revenue sharing, when consumers' marginal valuation of content is high, exclusivity contracts can make platforms worse off, suggesting that platforms may prefer not to mandate exclusivity contracts. In addition, when consumers' marginal valuation of content is relatively low, enforcing exclusivity contracts can increase content providers' total surplus. Finally, Prof. Baojun Jiang extends the analysis to consider differential advertising revenue sharing and delves into the impact of different multiple attribution regulatory strategies. The findings have important implications for digital content platform managers, providers, and policymakers.

    During the exchange session, both faculty and students actively interacted with Prof. JIANG Baojun concerning the research design, model construction and other questions raised by the audience.